This invention relates to an excavator or material handling bucket mountable on the handle of an excavator or material handling bucket of an excavating machine and the like, and more particularly to such a bucket provided with an implement for penetrating and fracturing hard surfaces being excavated or otherwise removed.
In most excavating or material removal operations involving the use of a conventional bucket, the cutting edges of the bucket normally are sufficient to penetrate the material being excavated or otherwise removed. When the surfaces of such materials may be too hard to be penetrated by such cutting edges, it has been the conventional practice to break up such hard surfaces by means of the use of a ripping implement typically consisting of a pointed tool capable of penetrating and fracturing hard ground or structural surfaces. Such implements typically have consisted of separate, dedicated implements mountable on the handles of excavating machines and the like or components of buckets mountable on such handles.
In the prior art, there are many buckets equipped with ripping teeth or scarifiers used for penetrating and breaking up hard surfaces being excavated or otherwise handled. The designs of such prior art implements, however, have not been found to be entirely satisfactory and effective, facilitating their use and thus providing improved productivity. It thus is the principal object of the present invention to provide a bucket mountable on the handle of an excavating machine and the like for the excavating or otherwise handling materials having hard surfaces, provided with improved means for penetrating and fracturing such hard surfaces and thus increasing the productivity of such buckets.
The present invention provides a bucket mountable on the handle of an excavating machine and the like, having means capable of penetrating and fracturing hard surfaces of materials being excavated or otherwise handled, generally consisting of a pair of side walls; an upper wall interconnecting the side walls; a downwardly and forwardly curved rear wall merging into a forwardly curved bottom wall interconnecting the side walls and providing a transversely disposed cutting edge; at least one ripping tooth mounted on the rear wall, projecting rearwardly and having a curved lower edge merging with the curvature of the rear and bottom walls to provide a substantially continuous curved line; and means for detachably connecting the bucket to the handle of the machine. Preferably, the lower edge of the ripping tooth and a portion of the rear and bottom walls of the bucket have the same radius of curvature, and such tooth is provided with a curved upper cutting edge. Either a single ripping tooth or a pair of ripping teeth may be used. In embodiments using a pair of longitudinally disposed, transversely spaced brackets for detachably connecting the bucket to the handle of the machine, and a pair of longitudinally disposed, transversely spaced ripping teeth, such teeth preferably are disposed adjacent to or aligned with such mounting brackets and adjacent to the side walls of the bucket to effectively transmit loads between the mounting brackets and the ripping teeth.